Don’t Expect Your Buyers To Know Anything About Domain Name Transfers

byMorganonMay 17, 2013

About 90% of the domains we sell at Linton Investments go to end-users, normal people who are buying a domain name for their company or a brand new business they’re starting. While they often have a particular domain in mind or a list of names they’re interested in they often don’t know anything about how to purchase and transfer a domain name.

The first thing I tell people is to avoid Pay Pal at all costs. This is an incredibly insecure way to purchase domain names and I insist on using Escrow.com for most of my domain sales.

Picking a good registrar also makes a huge difference, that’s why I recommend NameCheap, Go Daddy and OnlyDomains for all .COM, .NET, and .ORG domains. When it comes to ccTLDs 101Domain is the only choice in my book as they specialize in ccTLDs and offer the best support.

This week Go Daddy really went above and beyond for me and I’d like to give a huge thanks to my account manage Neil who made the transfer process much easier for my buyer. Just to emphasize the point I make in the title of this post, don’t expect your buyer to know anything about domain name transfers.

One of the domains I sold this week went to a large payment processing company in Canada. Really nice people but they knew absolutely nothing about how to accept a push from my Go Daddy account to theirs. Neil, my account manager at Go Daddy went the extra mile and actually called them on the phone personally to walk them through the process. I can tell you that I’ve had great experiences with the support team at both NameCheap and OnlyDomains as well which is why picking a good registrar really makes life easier.

The worst experience I’ve had is with Melbourne IT who took two weeks for a transfer to go through scaring the crap out of my buyer. I kept trying to explain that they were slow but the poor guy thought he was being ripped-off, and I can’t blame him, he knew nothing about domain transfers…and let’s face it, they shouldn’t take that long, ever. This is why I’ll never use Melbourne IT again but also why I have grown even more patient over the years.

As many people are now realizing, gone are the days of building a business selling domains to Domainers. The focus needs to be end-users and when you’re selling to end-users get ready to teach them how the whole process works. To help make things easier we are putting together some tutorials on the Linton Investments site, once they are done I will share them with all of you.

Just remember, while you may buy, sell, and transfer domains every week, for many people this is a completely new process so you’ll have to hold their hand through it. Or, if you’re with a kick-ass registrar like Go Daddy you might find someone like Neil who is nice enough to do it for you. Thanks again to Neil for saving me some time this morning and leaving my buyer incredibly happy with the whole experience!

It has been a while since I last used Snapnames but I do recall in the past periodically acquiring Melbourne-registered domains via Snapnames and the royal pain it was to transfer them out.

One thing I really like about Name.com backorders is that the interface allows you to not get involved with all the underlying registrars. If you ever do transfer out, you will notice that the name wasn’t really a Name.com registration.

I recently put together some quick infographics on how to setup a Go Daddy account, accept a domain account push etc. The vast majority of my domains are at Go Daddy and I basically insist on pushing domains to a Go Daddy account – it’s much easier and faster which prevents ‘buyer anxiety’ and takes a lot less of my time.

PicasMay 18, 2013, 12:56 am

Yes, I see NameCheap online support is much better than GD … we, non American ,always get online support chat in 30 seconds ,directly

Hey,
That was on the back of my mind but not really paying much attention to it.Its the last cog in the wheel which could blow the hold deal.
Will look forward to the info.Knowing how to carry out these steps correctly should keep all parties happy!!

I had Tess Diaz for several years and she was the tops. Even when she wasn’t my rep I could still call on her for help. She did make a career move and left GD, but if Neil has the same values of client relations like she had there, then you got yourself an ace of a rep.

That’s a big reason I like GoDaddy and while the trandferig may be easier at other registrars, it looks like their support can help easily without begging for assistance…